Thursday, March 4, 2010

Every MMO is the Worst MMO Ever.

I haven't played very many MMO's. Uhh...Only like 12.

But it doesn't seem like that many. I'm just curious, which is the worst you ever played? For me, it was FLYFF--In the early levels, which is all I really took the time for, there was really nothing to do but grind. You go to a hill, kill 5 of something and collect 5 something, and then go to the next hill and repeat.

A few hours of that, and I was done.

On the other hand, every MMO gets put down by somebody. I spend a lot of time talking about what makes MMO's great and what would make them better...I wonder what we would learn from identifying the lowest of the low.

3 comments:

For me, the worst MMO I experienced was "RF Online", but not for any particular feature, or lack therof. It was the fact that they sold me the game based on beautiful videos and screenshots, but upon launching the game, it looked horrible even on highest detail settings. Talk about buyer's remorse.

As for MMO gameplay on the whole, they're all so similar right now, it seems to be most about picking a setting you like best. Granted there are many settings I've been interested in exploring, but the lack of polish with the product keeps me from doing so. WoW draws me back time and again because it is a very polished, solid game - even if the gameplay itself gets repetitive and dull fairly swiftly.

I want to see more skill put into MMOs, beyond timing proper button presses. Active first or third-person combat like what you find in Oblivion, is something I'm really hoping to see in a polished MMO someday.

Oooh,toughie. I've played a lot fo truly aweful ones in my time. Probably the worst though would be Sherwood Online or something. Which I tried out probably like 5 years ago when I was bored. Its an abismal game, which I think is somehow still going.

If WoW is sweeping the industry for players and profits, it may be because it does the same thing as everybody else, but with more polish and finesse.

We could well separate MMO's into 4 categories.

1 Same Old Design, Very Polished 2 Same Old Design, Poorly Polished3 Innovative Design, Poorly Polished4 Innovative Design, Very Polished

I think the grand majority of MMO's are number 2. There may be a small handful of number 1. And people hardly touch 3 and 4. 3 would be less successful than 2. 4 would be...A dangerous risk for any developer, and more likely to land on 3 anyways.